Mortal sins and the possibility of hell

References on which this reflection is based: Catholic Catechism | Catholic Answers Article

It seems that committing a mortal sin removes one’s soul from a state of grace—but only until he repents of it. Usually, for a Catholic, this would be through the Sacrament of Reconciliation (confession to a priest), or, if it is not possible to confess to a priest, and one is close to death or in danger of dying, (b) resolving with perfect contrition not to sin again, and to confess it as soon as possible. Perfect contrition means the perfect kind, not the perfect degree of contrition, namely, sorrow based on the charity of God, as opposed to sorrow for imperfect reasons such as fear of punishment; thankfully, the two kinds of contrition are not mutually exclusive. An Anglican, not holding the Sacrament of Reconciliation, would confess through the liturgy and through private prayer, yet, by the grace of God, this would be with the same spirit and to the same effect: contrite repentance arising from the work of God’s charity within the heart, restoring the state of grace. Therefore, we have this great consolation: No sin is mortal if it is repented of.

But what if a Christian who is generally devout commits a sort of impulsive mortal sin, and by terrible chance, suddenly dies during the act? Given that he has not repented at the moment of death, would he die outside a state of grace?

Firstly, the idea that someone would impulsively commit a mortal sin, is almost a self-contradiction. I was in on the jury of a murder trial a couple of years ago, and we had to distinguish the degree to which the murder was malicious (willful, deliberate, and premeditated), or whether it was in the “heat of passion.” Impulse is heat of passion, and it excludes an act from being malicious. In a similar way, the gravity of sin seems to be greater in proportion to the degree to which it is not a surprise to the person committing it. As the Catechism says, “the promptings of feelings and passions can also diminish the voluntary and free character of the offense, as can external pressures or pathological disorders. Sin committed through malice, by deliberate choice of evil, is the gravest” (1861). There is this desire to paint a picture of a devout Christian who does a grave sin randomly, impulsively, almost accidentally—such as being swept up in an adulterous moment—and then suddenly has a heart attack and dies during that moment. But to my understanding, to the degree it is truly impulsive, it is not deliberate, and therefore not mortal. Or at least less so—these hypothetical situations, which deal with human hearts, are gradients. But we can dispose of the idea that God treats as truly mortal any sin that has not reached its perfection in the will’s defiance of charity and the rejection of the Holy Spirit’s urging.

However, it is unfortunately apparent that devout Christians still do commit such truly mortal sins, exercising the “radical possibility of human freedom, as is love itself” (CC 1861). And when a Christian commits that mortal sin in full knowledge and deliberation, there remains a moment, however brief, in which his soul will not and cannot turn from it, when the spirit which he has given authority over his soul is the same spirit of defiant rebellion as that of Satan, the spirit which blasphemes the Holy Spirit. In this moment the Christian will sense a great and terrible fear looming behind his other emotions. (This is the fear felt time and again in Flannery O’Conner’s stories.) How can it be excluded that this fear is the true fear of the possibility of hell, the soul’s sense that the abyss lies open before it in that moment?

I say “the possibility,” but not the certainty, for the Church urges us not to judge the state of a person’s soul. “Although we can judge that an act is in itself a grave offense, we must entrust judgment of persons to the justice and mercy of God” (CC 1861). And in cases such as suicide she urges us not to give up hope, for God, in ways known only to him, may yet lead the person’s soul to repentance.

Nevertheless, the possibility of hell lingers. What a terrifying tragedy it is, then, when a life ends in such a moment, when sorrow has not yet made open to it the forgiveness of God. What a harrowing, sobering thought for him who is in entangled in the throes of grave sin, that any moment could be our last! “For our freedom has the power to make choices for ever, with no turning back” (CC 1861). After all, doesn’t it matter most how a story ends, rather than how it begins? Can’t a fairy-tale be turned into a tragedy by its last line?

The possibility of hell lingers, and disturbs us. Perhaps it is well that it does.

The root of faith is action

Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock. And everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house on sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. And it collapsed and was completely ruined. (Matthew 7:24-28)

In a sermon on this passage that I heard last year, the pastor quoted a Biblical scholar who explained that, in ancient semitic house construction, it was necessary to dig down into the soil and lay a deeper foundation, or else the erosion of the sandy soil would make your house unstable. So the contrast here is not so much about where you build (although he did not exclude that as a possible element) as it is about whether you build deep or shallow. Whoever hears but doesn’t do is he who doesn’t lay a deep foundation. Building on sand is not laying a foundation. Doing is the foundation on rock.

So it’s not about two alternative things (building here or building over there) but about the presence or absence of one thing: the work of digging down to the rock before you start laying brick.

Many preachers of this passage make it out to be a question of whether you are building your life on Jesus (valuing him, obeying him, investing time and energy in him), or on superficial things. Ironically, this was the conclusion point of the pastor who delivered that sermon–he did not realize the implications of his own source!

In fact Jesus is not drawing a line between people who make him the basis of their life and those who make something else their basis, but between people who have Jesus as the superficial or supposed basis of their life (supposed, because they do not obey) and those who have Jesus as the real basis of their life because they obey. It is not about choosing and valuing God above all else, but about being sincere in your choice of God by acting on it. That is the climax of the Sermon on the Mount. It’s a poignant image of the harmony between faith and works that challenges you and me to act on what we hear. May God give us grace and rouse our wills to such courage.

The bodiliness of Christ’s body

(This is a harmonization on my previous post on the Real Presence.)

When we eat the Communion meal, what does Christ offer to us? Is it his spirit, or his body? It is his body that he offers us.

But how shall we say he is present with us in this offering? On this Christians differ. Some say that he is bodily present, and others that he is only spiritually present.

But it is nonsense to say that his presence is merely spiritual, for a body is not present when it is present only in spirit. The nature of the spirit is incorporeal, and the nature of the body is corporeal. Therefore, The Spirit of Christ is present in us through that which is incorporeal, but the Body of Christ is present in us through that which is corporeal. A spirit can no more be present as body than multiplication can be covered with mud, and a body can no more be present as spirit than I can throw a baseball and hit bilingualism. We do not say, “Here is the Spirit of Christ in my hand,” nor “Here is the Body of Christ in my mind,” for his body cannot exist in our mind, but only the idea of his body. For “that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

When Christ offers us his body, then, we must realize what it is we hold: no mere thought of him, but Himself, Immanuel Incarnate, with us in body.

Some thoughts on purpose and evangelicalism

Most evangelical churches communicate their purpose in terms of a cycle: usually a salvation component, a discipleship component, and an envangelization component, like grow, serve, reach… win, equip, share… glorify God by making fully devoted disciples… etc. Other churches communicate it through their ethos in oft-repeated statements like, “We are blessed so that we can bless.”

There is one sort of organism which seems to possess this kind of cyclical process: a virus. They seem to exist only in order to spread. Biologists question whether to regard viruses as fully living organisms or not.

I do not deny that the purpose of God for man always includes a desire that he would go out, that he would bless others by his blessing. There is indeed something utterly outpouring, something outwardly oriented and abundant, in the nature of God’s love within the trinity. The most natural thing, the inevitable thing, when filled with this love is to move outward, to want to tell it and give it and dance in the streets with it.

But I wish this kind of love were articulated more often in terms of sonship and family, of abundant life rather than replicating machine. What I mean is: as a father I certainly and deeply want my daughter to bless others, and I want her to become the bearer of the truth and love that I am bestowing on her, in a world that will be hers after I am gone. I want her life shine for the glory of God. But I hesitate to frame this great desire as “her purpose” or the reason that I brought her into being. There is something much deeper, more ontological about her purpose–I want her to be simply because I love her and want her to be, because being is good (after all, God is pure being). She is a living being who, to the extent that she comes alive, will radiate life; but her purpose is not to spread life, so much as to be alive. She is an end in herself, because she is, in her very being, the expression of my joy and love. And that is the way I think that it is our purpose to evangelize: to use (hopefully correctly) Thomist language: it is an accidental, rather than substantial purpose, and thus not the most fundamentally descriptive of what our purpose is.

Keeping this distinction makes all the difference, because it is the difference between our approaching the modus operandi of our Christian life as fundamentally doers for God, or receivers of God. The Incarnation of Christ compels us to rejoice that we are indeed the means of God on the earth, but that is only because we are first and forever his ends.

The Church must have authority

The One True Church is anointed by God and speaks with authority. It is the solemn duty of The Church to overrule false teachers and scholars who twist the scriptures, and to preserve the deposit of faith entrusted to her once for all. However, false teachers cannot be overruled except by a higher authority. This authority cannot be man’s opinion or scholarship, which is of merely equal authority to that of the liars. There is no final authority in mere scholarship, for books cannot speak for themselves, and the minds of scholars are the minds of men. Mere men, I say, unless they are anointed by the Spirit of Christ. For the Church asserts, and must assert, an ultimate authority to interpret the Scripture and Tradition given to her by God. The Church must be able to answer a false teacher wearing the robes of her apostolic anointing, to pronounce a judgment that bears weight, so that the faithful will not be led astray.

Who is this Church? Protestants say it is all the true Christians in all the denominations of the world. But the voice of the ethereal “global church” is silent; the voice of “all baptized Christians” cannot speak, for they have no body. There is no courtroom in Protestantism, for no man submits to the judgment of another. There is no judge who can do more than ridicule the Joel Osteens and the Rob Bells, so they shout at one another like an unruly parliament, each with his piece of the truth.

The voice of the Church comes from a body incarnate, for it is the voice of the Incarnate Christ. She speaks as one with authority, saying, “Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” She asserts the exclusive authority to proclaim doctrine, not because her exegesis is based on good reasons, but because the Spirit of the Lord is upon her. She speaks “not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,so that her faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.”

Where is the Church who speaks with such a voice? Where is she who proclaims with the prophetic zeal, “I will not share my glory”? She stands in tattered robes of bloody history, but it is a history that leads all the way back to the Cross, and the Fire of Jesus is still in her eyes.

The perpetual virginity of Mary

Growing up as a Baptist, I always assumed that Mary the mother of Jesus ceased to be a virgin after she gave birth to Jesus. This was because there were several references in the Bible to “Jesus’ brothers,” most notably James, the early church leader and author of the book of James. There’s also that passage where it says that Joseph “knew her not until she gave birth to a son,” which I always assumed to imply that, afterwards, he did “know” her. But to be honest, all of this was just assumption because, to my recollection, the idea that Mary could have or should have been perpetually a virgin never entered my mind as a distinct thought, nor was it ever brought up as a topic for direct discussion. Nevertheless, I always found it somehow weird to think about Jesus having half-brothers. Imagine my surprise to discover that the early church commonly held the view that Mary remained a virgin, and even refuted suggestions to the contrary (Jerome v. Helvidius, for example). Indeed, even the Protestant Reformers, including Calvin and Luther, believed that Mary remained a virgin!

Thanks to Matt Fradd at Pints with Aquinas for bringing this topic up, and presenting most of the points I summarize in this post. He shares in particular St. Thomas Aquinas’ statement on the matter, which, he points out, is quite strong given Aquinas’ precise and non-emotional style.

Without any hesitation we must abhor the error of Helvidius, who dared to assert that Christ’s Mother, after His Birth, was carnally known by Joseph, and bore other children. For, in the first place, this is derogatory to Christ’s perfection: for as He is in His Godhead the Only-Begotten of the Father, being thus His Son in every respect perfect, so it was becoming that He should be the Only-begotten son of His Mother, as being her perfect offspring.

Secondly, this error is an insult to the Holy Ghost, whose “shrine” was the virginal womb [“Sacrarium Spiritus Sancti” (Office of B. M. V., Ant. ad Benedictus, T. P.), wherein He had formed the flesh of Christ: wherefore it was unbecoming that it should be desecrated by intercourse with man.

Thirdly, this is derogatory to the dignity and holiness of God’s Mother: for thus she would seem to be most ungrateful, were she not content with such a Son; and were she, of her own accord, by carnal intercourse to forfeit that virginity which had been miraculously preserved in her.

Fourthly, it would be tantamount to an imputation of extreme presumption in Joseph, to assume that he attempted to violate her whom by the angel’s revelation he knew to have conceived by the Holy Ghost.

We must therefore simply assert that the Mother of God, as she was a virgin in conceiving Him and a virgin in giving Him birth, did she remain a virgin ever afterwards.

ST III Q. 28, A. 3.

Very well, then, it seems that the historical church opinion on the matter is clear, and it simply never made it into the partitioned historical context of my Evangelical world. But what of the references to Jesus’ brothers?

It is important to point out first that the term “brother” was used at that time in a more general sense, and could easily have included cousins or other relations, a fact that makes sense to me after witnessing the strong extended-family bonds of Arab culture while living in Saudi Arabia.

A commonly held view is that those brothers were not Jesus’s half-brothers, but his step-brothers, the sons of Joseph and his late wife (it is known even in evangelical scholarship that Joseph was probably much older than Mary). This is born out by the observation that, at the Cross, Jesus bequeaths care of Mary to John, something that would have been both unnecessary and inappropriate if Mary had other sons. Another connection from Arab culture: the protective duty of sons for their mother is so strong that it was not uncommon for me to hear about a youngest son being discouraged or delayed from leaving home so that the mother will not be without a caretaker and comforter. (I don’t know why the husband is insufficient, but nevertheless it underscores the cultural sentiment.)

An apocryphal but nevertheless important book from the early 2nd century, the Protoevangelium of James, narrates in detail that Mary was a consecrated virgin at the temple, and Joseph was an old widower who agreed to marry her in order to be her guardian, to house her during her monthly uncleanness. Even without digging into the validity of the book in the early church, (which I have not), it presents an interesting, scholastically viable, and Biblically compatible alternative.

As for the assumption that, because Mary was a virgin until she gave birth to Jesus, she must not have remained so afterwards, even Calvin decries the assumption as unsubstantiated, and indeed, it does not bear out from the use of the word “until” in the Greek.

So it is not obvious from the Bible that Jesus had uterine brothers, nor that Joseph knew her; and the church has long resisted and abhorred the idea. Why then would we try to argue the contrary?

The word of God and the Bible

In my post from last year, I claimed that the Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura, which forms the epistemological basis for all of Protestant thought, does not have a scriptural basis. I concluded that it is contradictory to its own standard, and therefore must be false. The claim that the Bible does not support sola scriptura will seem a foreign, if not hostile, thought to many who like me were raised in Evangelical Christianity, and so I would like to elaborate and substantiate my claim here.

If we look for the doctrine of sola scriptura in the Bible, it is quickly apparent that nothing close to an explicit declaration of such an idea exists anywhere within it. Rather most attempts to establish biblical precedent for the doctrine do so by equating it with the word of God; indeed, in my own Protestant mind the Bible and the word of God were pure synonyms. This works to justify sola scriptura because the Bible establishes the word of God in various places and in various ways as the authoritative impetus that brought the Church into being, which also continually defines and sustains it; thus, a strong case can be made that it is appropriate to attribute to the word of God alone the position of prime authority in matters of doctrine. Therefore, if the word of God could be understood to refer specifically and exclusively to the Bible, then sola scriptura could be established. However, despite the widespread assumption among Protestants that the scriptural references to “the word of God” refer precisely to the Bible, it is impossible to draw the equivalency.

1) The Bible never calls any book of the New Testament “the word of God.”

It is true that there are many places in the Old Testament where the phrase “the word of God” refers to the Old Testament scriptures, and two places in the New Testament as well: Jesus refers to the Ten Commandments as “the word of God” in Matthew 15:6 (with its parallel in Mark) and uses the phrase again in John 10:35 in reference to a Psalm. However, it is not enough to establish the Old Testament as the word of God: the Christian claims the New Testament as well, and it cannot be argued that the New Testament asserts itself to be the word of God simply because it accepts the Old Testament as the word of God. So, does the Bible establish the books of the New Testament as the word of God? According to my research of the Bible, there is no place therein where the phrase “the word of God” is used to refer to any written document that would later become canonized in the New Testament.

2) The Bible never even implies that most of the New Testament, including the Gospels, are “the word of God.”

Despite the fact above, we can call the New Testament scriptures “the word of God” if we can only establish them as scripture, because 2 Timothy 3:16 says that all scripture is breathed out by God. Very well, but in only one case does the New Testament confer scriptural status to any part of itself (2 Peter 3:16), and then only the writings of Paul are affirmed, leaving the Four Gospels (the core of the Bible!), Acts, Hebrews, James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude, and Revelation without any Biblical affirmation of their status as scripture, and therefore, without even being able to be inferred as the “word of God.” It cannot be argued that, simply because Peter acknowledged Paul’s writings as scripture, he must have also meant those of James, Jude, and the rest.

3) New Testament references to the “word of God” are almost always to things apart from its own contents.

Instead, what we find throughout the New Testament is that the phrase “the word of God” almost exclusively refers to the Gospel, without any indication of its medium, and that where clues are given as to whether the phrase refers to something spoken or written, they point exclusively to something spoken. The phrase is used to refer to the prophecies of John the Baptist, to the oral teachings of Christ (at Gennesaret, for example), to the message of the apostles at Pentecost, to the message carried by Paul’s evangelistic journeys and delivered to Timothy, etc. In all of these passages, the words that constituted “the word” are not recorded. (For example, we don’t know exactly what words Timothy learned as a child.) It is important to realize that when the authors of the New Testament writings refer to “the word of God” in these passages, they are not referring to their own writings, nor the writings of any contemporary New Testament authors, nor explicitly including in their writings the word of God to which they refer. Rather, they are referring to something outside the texts, something that they expected their audience to know.

Thus, even having accepted that the word of God is the supreme authority in the life of the church, we see that the Bible does not include all of itself in the phrase, and includes other things apart from itself. Therefore, we cannot draw the equivalence from the supreme authority of the word of God to the supreme authority of the Bible. The only legitimate hermeneutical path to biblically justify the concept of sola scriptura fails. It is ironic that the Protestant, in embracing sola scriptura, must doubt whether the Bible is the word of God, while the Catholic, embracing the Bible as the word of God on the testimony of the Magisterium and Tradition of the Church, can justify the belief, and rightly say when the Scriptures are read, “The Word of the Lord, thanks be to God.”

The Real Presence of Christ

Many Protestant denominations, such as the Anglican church, hold that in the Eucharist we experience the “Real Presence of Christ,” desiring for Christ to be really and truly present with us when we do this act of utmost communion with him, yet rejecting the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, that Christ is physically present in the elements. They maintain the doctrine that, in the words of the Anglican 39 Articles, “The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And the mean whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper, is [only] Faith.” However, I believe this to be contradictory to the belief that Christ is really present in the Eucharistic meal. Let me explain:

We all know that the real presence of a human person is necessarily both spiritual and physical.

On one hand, a person cannot be said to be really present when their body is present, but their spirit absent. Thus we say to ourselves when we kiss a loved one who has deceased moments before, “They are not really here”: for their body is present, yet their spirit is not. And when two lovers are together, if one senses that, even though the other be physically present, their heart is with another, or their mind daydreaming or preoccupied, they will say to them, “You are not really here.”

Neither can a person be said to be really present when their spirit is present, but their body absent. Thus, when we excuse someone for not really being with us at a gathering, we say that they are “with us in spirit.” And when a lover off at war writes home to his beloved, or sings “I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams,” he feels bittersweet longing because his spirit is with those he loves, yet his body is away, so the reality of his presence is unfulfilled. We Christians especially know this because because of our longing while we are separated from our Lord Jesus while he prepares a place for us, for “we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:6), even though his Spirit is with us, whom he has sent as a comforter. Therefore, regarding a human person, where either the spirit or the flesh is lacking, there is not the real presence of the person.

Now, we believe that Christ is a human person, for “he came down from heaven and was incarnate and was made man.” From the moment of his incarnation, the person of Christ has possessed a human nature, inextricably joined to his divine nature in hypostatic union; and having resurrected and ascended into heaven, he reigns there now as both God and man, no less incarnate than he was when he was on earth.

Therefore, how can the Real Presence of the Person of Christ be with us in the Eucharist, if this presence is not physical as well as spiritual in nature? If he does not come down into the bread, as much as we ascend into heaven, then in what sense do we call this presence “real”?

I would go even further, and suggest that this Real Presence of Christ is necessary for true Christian life–a life of longing in the absence of Christ’s Real Presence, albeit comforted by his Spiritual presence as a sign, leaves one alone in the bodily work of life; and what what one does alone, one can only do by one’s own power. The failure to have Christ bodily with us leads us into a subtle self-dependence, as God ceases to invigorate our flesh and blood, remaining merely as our inspiration. Christ came as spirit and body so that the whole man, body and soul, might be united to him in faith.

Semiotics and the mystery of the Eucharist

I wrote a draft of this a couple of years ago. I saw it again, and thought it appropriate to post now (a bit updated), to dovetail with my next post.

A major difference between Catholic and Protestant theology is in the way that they believe God communicates to man. Catholics believe that the mysteries of grace that God extends to us are chiefly communicated by tangible signs – the sacraments. The seven sacraments of the Catholic church are Baptism, Confirmation, Reconciliation, the Eucharist (Lord’s Supper), Marriage, Holy Orders (Ordination), and Anointing of the Sick. In the performance of these sacred acts, the heavenly graces of God are communicated into reality. Catholics place immense weight on the value of the sacraments as vehicles of God’s grace. In fact, the catechism states, “The Church affirms that for believers the sacraments of the New Covenant are necessary for salvation” (1129).

Catholic doctrine places supreme importance on the Eucharist, the “Sacrament of Sacraments.” “The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being” (1325). All Christians affirm that Christ is the sole basis of our redemption and salvation; the Catholic doctrine venerates the Eucharist precisely because it equates it with Christ. ‘In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist ‘the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained’” (1374). Simply put, participating in Holy Communion is how to receive Jesus because the Eucharist is such a powerful symbol of Jesus that it actually is Jesus. The sacramental sign is necessary to the reality. You cannot get at the reality without the sacrament as a type and form of it that you can experience in the physical world. Thus, the sign is “efficacious” and “causes” the reality of communion with God.

Evangelicals practice the Lord ’s Supper, but they don’t regard these things the same way. They simply say that the ceremonies are special reminders for believers, special moments when God’s power and person are uniquely present, but in a metaphorical, abstract, symbolic sense. Nothing about the actual words or deeds causes the graces that they signify. In fact, in the view of most Evangelicals, believing salvation to be linked to the performance of sacraments is tantamount to “salvation by works” as opposed to “by grace through faith”—that is, no salvation at all. “You must believe and…” is damnable to many an evangelical ear. Faith is more internal and abstract, and does not require a physical action. Born and raised in an Evangelical church, I long thought the Catholic doctrine corrupt. Like the Galatians, Catholics had forgotten grace and bloated the sacraments into a system of good deeds. Granted, that may be true for many who were “raised Catholic” but have a poor understanding of Christianity; the sacraments are able to distract people from the things that they should signify; just as an unintelligent dog will not follow the signification of your pointing finger to the ball you have thrown, but will run eagerly to examine your finger. However, correctly understood, the Catholic teaching of the sacraments as vital is not incompatible with salvation by grace through faith in Christ.

The Institution of Holy Communion is predicted by Jesus in John 6:22-65, and happens during the Last Supper in Matthew 26:26-29 / Luke 22:14-23 / Mark 14:22-25. Suffice it to say that the meaning of Jesus’ statements, “This is my body,” and “this is my blood” is fiercely debated. I have no place at the round-table of scholars of Greek and Aramaic. However, simply making the assumption that Jesus intended to create some kind of semiotic (sign) relationship between himself and the bread/wine, I think I can speak generally about to the issue. French linguist Ferdinand de Saussur proposed a very helpful model of the sign. Allow me to quote from Chandler’s resource:
Saussure offered a ‘dyadic’ or two-part model of the sign. He defined a sign as being composed of:

- - a ‘signifier’ (signifiant) – the form which the sign takes; and
  - the ‘signified’ (signifié) – the concept it represents.

The sign is the whole that results from the association of the signifier with the signified (Saussure 1983, 67; Saussure 1974, 67). The relationship between the signifier and the signified is referred to as ‘signification’, and this is represented in the Saussurean diagram by the arrows. If we take a linguistic example, the word ‘Open’ (when it is invested with meaning by someone who encounters it on a shop doorway) is a sign consisting of:

a signifier: the word open
a signified concept: that the shop is open for business

The point is that the signifier and signified are unified in the sign. Thus, to say that taking the bread and wine of Communion is necessary for salvation is to say that you must partake of the sign of Jesus’ body and blood, not to say that there is a different source of salvation.

The question, then, is whether physical signs are the means by which God communicates to us. The Catholic church says that they are. According to the Catechism, “In human life, signs and symbols occupy an important place. As a being at once body and spirit, man expresses and perceives spiritual realities through physical signs and symbols. As a social being, man needs signs and symbols to communicate with others, through language, gestures, and actions. The same holds true for his relationship with God” (1146).

I suggest that the Catholic Church is absolutely right about this, and that Evangelicals need to check their semiotics. For Christ is the center of the Christian life, the ultimate means of God’s communication with us, and he Himself is a sign, the Signifier of God, indeed, the Word of God, a physical and efficacious sign like the serpent of old. “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”

Altar calls

These will not be the most refined thoughts but I think it behooves me to get some of them out of my system in whatever form, and hopefully refine them later.

I believe that God can transform a heart in a single instant. I believe that many people have been changed by the power of the Holy Spirit of Jesus within a worship service. In fact, I believe that worship services are especially fertile environments where God’s spirit works on human hearts. However, I think altar calls are often not a part of that work.

By altar call, I mean the climactic moment where the people are asked to and given the chance to make an individual, subjective response to the truth that has been presented in the service (whether by the sermon or by other means as well). As we discussed when I was on an internal review team at that church, worship is focus + response. The sermon brings the focus, and then there is the opportunity of response. Traditionally, this opportunity includes an invitation to come down to the front and pray with an elder or kneel and pray. In Baptist churches like mine growing up, it begins with “every head bowed, every eye closed” and includes a period where you can silently repeat a prayer after the pastor and then raise your hand to show him that you prayed it, after which point he assures you that your life has been changed today, and to come talk to an elder afterwards. I also include in my definition of altar call the adaptations of many new-generation evangelical churches that are softening these formulations out, just offering an open time to respond with multiple options–you can come down front and pray with an elder, or pray a free-style prayer.

Here’s the thing about altar calls: to the extent that they are overt, they are focused on conversion, and to the extent to which they are not (just “creating a space”), they are subjective and provide no guidance or protection from error.

An overt altar call is always focused on conversion, whether it be new or a “rededication” or some partial rededication of one area or issue in one’s life. The problem with this is that it leaves nothing to do for people who have already converted and devoted their lives to God. I cannot tell you the number of times I have tuned out during the climax of the worship service, saying to myself, “Believer? Check. This doesn’t apply to me.”

Even as many churches move away from such overt altar calls, perhaps sensing the awkwardness of having a gathering comprised mostly of Christians who have already performed the act that is the climax and purpose of the gathering, there are still issues with modified “space for personal response” times. The problem is that they subjectivize the response to God, legitimizing any interpretation of the truth that is presented in the sermon. They turn the whole service into something that is focused on us. It begins with something about God, and then looks at us and asks us to finish off the service by the powers of our own sincerity. The Holy Spirit is beseeched to move on the people, but there is no anchor for the Spirit in Truth. Rather the Truth (the scriptures in the sermon) are a means to the end of an experience in which the Spirit’s movement is located in the unprovable, irrefutable castle of personal conviction. The worship service thus becomes the corporate equivalent of the evangelical private “quiet time” and even the typical small group study: that which is objective truth (the Bible) is subjected to private interpretation and application in each person’s individual mind. Thus Human Reason sits as lord over the Sacred Scriptures.

The problem with this is that it leads to all sorts of misguidedness and error on the part of church members. The only way to avoid this is to guide the people objectively through response as we do through focus–to help them respond in truth as they receive truth. But how can a response be objective? It must have a physical reality, an object outside the human mind. Such an object is not available within Evangelical theology. It is, however, available within the theology of Catholicism, in the Eucharist. This objective act is both receiving and responding to God in a way that is at once both spiritual and physical. This act, and the faith associated with it, roots the faith of the believer in something outside himself and makes the act of worship as Incarnational as the Gospel it professes. The Eucharist is the proper climax of worship and the proper act around which Christians who have already received the waters of Baptism should gather. Instead of being perpetual altar-going converts, plumbing the depths of their personal sincerity for Jesus, they take of his Body and Blood and find his Real Presence before them.